2020 Vision: Home design trends for the new year and beyond
You may not be old enough to remember the 1970s but you can probably picture the groovy living rooms, wood paneling and shag carpets of the era.
Home and lifestyle design sets the stage for our memories, experiences and collective history. It reflects the mood and attitudes of our times, showcasing triumphs of technology and artistic aspirations. As we look with optimism and hope to a new decade, we address new questions as well: What comes next? Who will we be in the months and years to come? And is farmhouse still happening?
Regarding trend directions for 2020, the answers are resounding and clear: less anxiety and stress, more design that aligns with health, wellness, sustainability and a sense of calm. We want to exhale — and perhaps install an indoor water fountain or backyard playhouse for our miniature goat (really).
The decade ahead will be spent in pursuit of serenity and wellness, along with a passion for increasingly multifunctional spaces, global influences and customization, according to data and analysis from online design platforms like Pinterest, Houzz, Etsy and design network HGTV. Here’s how it all breaks down:
“People are looking for calm,” said Mitchell Parker, editor for Palo Alto-based renovation website Houzz with more than 40 million monthly users. “With all the tech and screen time, the environment [issues] and political landscape, I get a sense from talking with the designers and homeowners that people are really looking for their homes to be these kind of calm, quieting, soothing spaces where they can unplug and recharge.”
Cultural shifts in how we live are also demanding increased emphasis on functionality and multipurpose spaces.
“The home is becoming the hub for so many different activities,” said Enid Hwang, director of community and culture for San Francisco-based Pinterest, the vision-board-on-steroids platform that boasts more than 320 million online users per month. “It is your office, not just where you live. It’s also your gym and where you want to entertain. So all these different facets of life — like wellness, fitness, entertaining — there’s this desire to bring what was previously an out-of-home experience into your actual living space.”
“People are staying home a lot more,” said Alessandra Wood, vice president of style for San Francisco-based online design platform Modsy. “It changes our relationship with our spaces, and people feel more comfortable investing in them.”
The ability to shop, stream theater-quality content, and virtually connect without leaving our living rooms is not just changing our habits, it is inspiring the way we want our homes to look. Isolating and insular? Not at all.
“Our data is telling us so strongly that people are thinking sustainably and getting global inspiration more than ever before,” Hwang said. “So those two big themes are being tripled in importance through everything that includes style and home and all of the purchasing and decorating decisions therein.”
1. Bespoke style
Custom furnishings and decor are increasingly accessible. “A number of brands are leaning in to customization, including us,” said Wood, who last year introduced Ravine Home — a line of custom sofas and chairs. “So this idea of creating something just for you, for your space — it’s something we really see people responding to.”
2. Softly-colored kitchens
Wildly popular all-white kitchens are having their palette expanded to include creamy pastels in grays, greens, blues and earth tones. It’s a subtle, serene shift.
3. Island time
One is good, two is better. “The kitchen island is a staple,” said Los Angeles-based designer Jaime Rummerfield of Woodson and Rummerfield’s House of Design. “We have clients ordering two islands now. They’re not identical. — one is more social with seating; the other is for working and cooking — and they both have different surfaces on them. It speaks to the grandeur of the kitchen as the nucleus of the house.”
4. Into the woods
Houzz reports that kitchen design elements such as unpainted wood drawers, cabinetry, accessories and wood-wrapped range hoods will be trending. Parker noted the look breaks up large expanses of painted cabinetry, updates the popular two-toned kitchen and adds welcome visual warmth. “I’m seeing a lot more wood cabinets, not off-the-shelf honey-colored style. ... Technology has advanced to the point where you can get really cool variations in stains and grain patterns,” he said.